Communications handling centers, such as telephone call centers, forward incoming communications, such as telephone calls, for processing by one of several associated call handling personnel or "agents". Other communications centers may be used to forward voice-over-internet protocol ("VoIP") communications; electronic mail messages; facsimiles or the like, to associated handling agents.
Telephony call centers, for example, are often used to dispatch emergency services; as telemarketing sales centers; as customer service centers; or otherwise to automatically distribute received calls. Each incoming call (a communication) has a number of handling requirements, depending on, for example, the nature of the call, the originating call area, and the language of the call. Agents, on the other hand, each have abilities to process calls having certain handling requirements. Typically, agents are able to process one or more call types. For example, agents are typically trained to process certain call subject matters and certain call languages.
In known telephony call centers, computerized communications center equipment places incoming telephone calls, of a particular type, requiring defined skills, in queues of like calls. Appropriate agents have skills necessary to process calls in the queues, and are assigned to such queues. Agents are often assigned to multiple queues, reflective of their particular handling skills. Typically, this is done to increase the handling capacity of the center by making improved use of available communications handling resources.
Quite often, agents may handle calls related to one or more subject areas, and possess varied attributes that are relevant to all subject areas they are capable of handling. For example, a telephone call center agent may speak multiple languages, and may therefore be able to process telephone calls relating to a particular subject matter in all these languages. One simple approach used to deal with multiple agent attributes is to create and administer individual queues, each of which takes into account the subject matter and the attributes of the agent. For example, if an agent is capable of handling service calls in French and English, a call center may be configured to maintain call queues "Service-English"; and "Service-French". This, however, is administratively very cumbersome.
Other known telphony call centers use agent-skill indicators, associated with agents in order to connect calls. In such centers, a call is connected to an agent having an agent-skill indicator matching that of the call, within an administrative group of agents known groups as a "split". Agents, however, are typically only assignable to single splits, and typically only a single agent-skill indicator is used to connect the call. Disadvantageously, such call centers do not use agent attributes across "splits". This may lead to an inefficient utilization of call center resources. Moreover, these communications handling centers do not allow for the easy administration and re-assignment of agents to queues, while maintaining agent skill-sets.
Accordingly, an improved communications handling center that forwards incoming communications based on queues and agent attributes is desirable.